1

Pre-viewing discussion questions:Do you like drinking wine?

Which styles or varieties of wine do you like best?

Where is Burgundy and what do you know about this region?

Where is Manhattan and what is it famous for?

Where is San Francisco and what do you know about it?

What do you know about vintage wine, how much it costs, and how it is bought and sold?

Do you know who the man in the photograph below is? If so, what do you know about him?

Listening and Comprehension

2

Vocabulary: Match the word and meaning

1. counterfeit: (adj.) They printed counterfeit money.

2. investigator: (noun) She hired a private in-vestigator because she suspected her husband was cheating.

3. to contrive: (verb) She contrived to get him to marry her by falling pregnant.

4. forger: (noun): The forger’s work looked like the real thing.

5. to dupe: (verb) He was duped into paying $50,000 for a forged painting.

6. extradite: (verb) The police were attempting to extradite the accused from China.

7. heist: (noun) The criminals stole over $3 mil-lion in the bank heist.

8. to misappropriate: (verb) The politician was accused of misappropriating public funds for his personal benefit.

9. inconsistencies: (noun) plural. There were many inconsistencies in the suspects stories.

10. fugitive: (noun) Police searched surrounded areas for the fugitive.

11. testimony: (noun) The witness gave testi-mony under oath.

12. fraudster: (noun) Many fraudsters use email to first make contact with people.

13. to prosecute: (verb) The applicant chose to prosecute in court.

14. seizure: (noun) The seizure of drugs and weapons by police was estimated to be worth $2 million.

15. questionable: (adj.) His methods for getting answers from suspects are questionable. Some say he uses too much force.

a) like a detective.

b) to send someone back to the country where they are accused of crime, so a court can de-cide if they are guilty.

c) to do something difficult or make something happen by using your intelligence or by tricking people.

d) to accuse someone of a crime in a law court.

e) the person who has forged or made an illegal copy of something to fool people.

f) to trick someone.

g) self-contradictions, a lack of harmony be-tween different elements.

h) a crime in which valuable things are taken illegally and often violently from a place or per-son.

i) fake.

j) someone who is escaping or hiding from the police or from a dangerous situation.

k) a formal statement about what someone knows or believes to be true, especially in a law court.

l) someone who gets money by deceiving peo-ple.

m) to steal something you’ve been trusted to take care of and use it for your own good.

n) the act of taking away something that is illegal, for example drugs, by someone in au-thority.

Crime and Law

Answers:1i), 2a), 3c), 4e), 5f), 6b), 7h), 8m), 9g) 10j), 11k), 12l), 13d), 14n), 15o)

3

1. commodity: (noun) Commodity prices were down on the ASX today.

2. associates: (noun) Today I have a meeting with my associates about new market opportu-nities.

3. to depose: (verb) The president was deposed for corruption.

4. advances: (noun) Rudy received advances from the auction houses in anticipation of sales.

5. deadline: (noun) The deadline for the report is the end of the week.

6. trust fund: (noun) Trust fund babies often never have to worry about money for the rest of their lives.

7. recession: (noun) The global economy went into recession after 2012.

8. transaction: (noun) There are many transactions conducted each day on the stock exchange.

9. to inspect (verb):Imported goods are nearly always inspected on arrival at the port.

10. to skyrocket (verb) :.The price of bananas has skyrocketed after storms wiped out most crops.

11. cornering the market (idiom): Rudy bought up a huge amount of Burgundy, cornering the market in this wine.

12. liquidity: (noun) Shares have a liquidity that make them attractive assets.

13. volatility: (noun) Share markets can have a tremendous amount of volatility.

14. auction market: A trade occurs when the buyer and seller agree on a price.

a) a time by which something must be done.

b) the fact of speed or suddenness of change.

c) to escalate very quickly.

d) a giving of something, usually money, before goods or work is received.

e) a raw or or primary agricultural product that can be bought or sold. f) when the price increases because one entity takes control of a particular market segment.

g) term for when the economy shrinks.

h) exchange of money or goods.

i) to examine, checking.

j) to remove a leader or ruler from their position of power.

k) money, security, property held in trust for someone else.

l) buyers indicate the highest price they are will-ing to pay and sellers indicate the lowest price they are willing to accept.

m) a person who shares actively in anything as a business, enterprise, or undertaking; partner; colleague; fellow worker.

n) the fact of being able to be changed into cash easily.

Business

Vocabulary: Match the word and meaning

Answers:1e), 2m), 3j), 4d), 5a), 6k), 7g), 8h), 9i), 10c), 11f), 12n), 13b), 14l)

4

Close Viewing Marking KeyEach question is worth 3 marks.

1 for accuracy.1 for the level of detail.

1 for the grammatical correctness of the response.

First Viewing Questions

1. In your own words, who is Laurent Ponsot and what part does he play in the story?

Sample Answer: He’s a winemaker from Burgundy.(1) His family have owned their win-ery, DomainePonsot, since 1872. (2) Laurent is involved in recognising counterfeit Bur-gundy and demanding that a lot of them be withdrawn from auction at a John Kapon event. He then starts to investigate Rudy and searches for the source of Rudy’s wine. (3)

5

2. Who is John Kapon and what information is revealed through the documentary about him?

John was the son of a very nice family run wine store in Manhattan, Acker Merrill & Condit Co. It was advertised as being the oldest wine store in America. John became the head of the auction house Acker, Merrill, and Condit. He caught the attention of Jay McInerney by writing colourful emails about wine parties held by collectors, like the Angry Men. He was responsible for selling large lots of Rudy’s wine at auction.

3. Who is ‘Hollywood’ Jef Levy? Describe the relationship between him and Rudy.

Jef is a Hollywood film director. He became both a friend, spending three Christmas Eves with Rudy and his family, and a wine protégé of Rudy’s. Jef was duped into buying a large amount of counterfeit wine from Rudy’s collection.

4. Who is Maureen Downey and what role does she play in the saga?

She is a wine consultant. She met Rudy in 2000 or 2001 at an auction. Eighteen months later, Rudy contacted Maureen saying that he wanted to be a player in the auction scene. Later, she is involved in examining wine against the label templates from Rudy’s house to determine whether it is counterfeit.

5. Who is Rudy Kurniawan and what role does he play?

Rudy used to be a wine collector. He was considered to have an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and palate and was a cult figure in wine collecting circles. He was found guilty of committing fraud by bottling and selling fake wine.

6. Who is Arthur Sarkissian and what role does he have in the story? What did Rudy buy Arthur for his birthday?

He works as a Hollywood producer and met Rudy in 2004. He immediately liked Rudy for his warmth towards everyone. They hung out a lot and went to a lot of wine din-ners. Rudy was very generous towards Arthur buying him a bottle of Pol Roger ’49.

7. Who is Corie Brown and how does she fit into the puzzle?

She was a reporter/journalist who was curious about Rudy when she saw him at Christie’s spending a lot of money on wine. She interviewed him and wrote an article on him for the Times. She says Rudy was not open about his family or his source of income.

8. Who is Bill Koch and what part does he play in the story?

Bill is a businessman and wine collector. His investigator, Brad Goldstein, alerts him to the fact that he’s purchased a fake bottle of wine. Once aware that he’s been conned, he starts his own investigation into the wine that Rudy has supplied through Aker Merrill and Condit.

6

Close Listening Questions

9. Describe how John Kapon and Rudy helped each other.

John started having wine auctions that were more like parties. Rudy had an amazing col-lection of wines which he sold through John.

10. How are Eddie Tansil and Hendra Rahadra related to Rudy and what are they infamous for?

They are his uncles (his mother’s, Lenywati Tan, brothers). They are infamous for be-ing involved in the largest bank heist in Jakarta’s history and corporate fraud respective-ly.

11. How does Laurent Ponsot describe wine in the first three minutes of the docu-mentary?

Wine is alive. It’s not a beverage. It’s not a table or a plate or a car. (1) The name on the label represents, not only a wine, but a culture and history. (2) What people see and feel behind the wine has no price. (3)

12. When does Jay McInerney (novelist and wine writer) say that the ‘auction scene’ started and why?

In the 1990’s, the dot com boom. Everybody was making money. A culture of real-ly wealthy collectors gathering at these auctions to see and be seen bidding developed. This led to the prices really escalating.

13. Jef describes a group of men who love wine. What is their group called and why do they call themselves that? How often do they meet?

The Angry Men. They called themselves this because were sick of bringing great bot-tles of wine to dinners they’d been invited to and finding that everybody else had bought ‘shit’ or bad wine. So they decided to start a group where everybody would take turns hosting and serve outstanding wine. They meet eight times a year.

14. Describe what ‘blind tasting’ is.

Identifying wines from taste alone. You swirl to see if there’s anything to do with the alcohol. Look at the legs and see how slow or fast they fall. The smell primes your brain to think about what wine it could be.

7

Wine tasting is about using vocabulary to express to other wine tasters what it is you’re experiencing.

15. What does Arthur say about the people who live in LA?

They are full of shit.

16. In your own words, what makes Burgundy unique?

Burgundy is unique because the land the grapes are grown on belongs to such a small area; 70 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide. It’s composed of 1250 different legal and geographical areas (appellations). A short distance between where the grapes are grown produces a distinction in taste identifiable by a talented sommelier because there are different minerals and elements in different areas of earth.

17. How far below the ground is the cellar at Domaine Ponsot in Burgundy?

Eleven metres.

18. What happened in the ‘Rudy era’?

Burgundy went from being affordable to unobtainable. There were such tiny quantities of Burgundy worldwide that there wasn’t enough to satisfy the thirst. Subsequently, prices went up.

19. What does Ponsot say about the price of wine?

That there is no relationship between what is in the bottle and the price. He sells the bottle for 100 euro. Then it’s released at 1000 euro.

20. Name three things that Bill Koch has collected in the past.

Impressionistic art, samurai swords, silver coins from Greece, antiquities, sculpture, wine.

21. The first time Maureen Downey encountered a bottle of fake wine, how did she know?

Because it was much lighter than she’d expected.

22. Corie Brown says that Rudy was an expert on fake wine. Why did Rudy know so much about fake wine?

Because he told her that he’d bought so much of it.

23. How did Brad Goldstein (Bill Koch’s investigator) find out that Bill had bought a fake magnum of 1921 Petrus?

Petrus didn’t make magnums in 1921.

24. When did Elmer’s glue start being made?

8

The 1970’s

25. What were the respective motivations behind Bill Koch and Brad Goldstein in uncovering the fraud?

Bill didn’t like being told by the auction houses that it was his problem and Brad want-ed to show the elegance of the hustle.

26. What was Laurent Ponsot’s motivation behind getting involved in the fraud case?

He says, ‘when you find a fake wine, it is dirt on the integrity of Burgundy and I wanted to wash it.’

27. What year did Laurent Ponsot attend the ‘crazy wine auction’ and ask for his wines to be withdrawn from sale?

2008

28. Why was there a warrant out for Rudy’s arrest?

Because he had overstayed his student visa.

29. What address had Rudy used in Indonesia to obtain his student visa?

Jalan Gajah Mada Plaza.

30. What is the English equivalent of Pak Hendra?

Mr Smith

31. How long was James Wynn an FBI agent for?

30 years. (26 of which were spent investigating art theft or fraud)

32. What was the persona established by Rudy?

That he was a wealthy trust-fund baby sent to the US to care for this mother and was being given an allowance from this brother who was running the family companies.

33. What does James Wynn say about Rudy’s financial situation?

That he was desperate for money and constantly borrowing money from here to pay over there. His income was from wine. Acker, like many auction houses, offered ad-vances in anticipation of sales.

34. What does John Kapon say on television is an price advantage of buying wine compared to other assets?

That people actually drink it, increasing the value of the remaining bottles.

35. What was the most money Rudy was ‘obligated’ to Acker Merrill & Condit for at

9

one point?

$10 million.

36. When John Kapon stopped selling Rudy’s wine, what did Rudy do?

He started selling it through other auction houses, like Christies in 2009 and Spec-trum and Vanquish.

37. Why doesn’t Jef Levy think Rudy created the counterfeit wines?

He considers Rudy to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and incapable of doing any intensive arts and crafts.

38. Why does Laurent Ponsot think that Rudy couldn’t have created all the counter-feit bottles?

Because he estimates that it would take about an hour to counterfeit one bottle and there were over 15,000 fake bottles of wine in one of the big sales.

39. Why did Rudy’s father change Rudy’s name from Zhen Wang Huang to Rudy Kurniawan?

Because the family were of Chinese descent which was dangerous living in Indonesia at the time.

40. How much did Rudy bank transfer his brother’s in 2007?

$17 million.

41. How much did the judge rule that Rudy Kurniawan had to pay back to his vic-tims?

$28.4 million

42. How long does Rudy have to spend in prison?

10 years.

43. Does everyone involved think that Rudy’s punishment was fair. Why/why not?

No. Rudy’s defense lawyer asserts that it’s unbelievable that Rudy has been sentenced to more jail time than criminals who commit murder. Maureen Downey states that many of the people who benefitted financially from Rudy’s crime are still free, ‘living large’ and drinking great wine.

10

In 150 words discuss ONE of these statement made in the documentary:

‘To bring a criminal prosecution, it’s not enough to say they were negligent.’

or

‘When you leave things unregulated, you allow the wolves to come in and game the sys-tem. And this system had been gamed.’

Writing